Amazon: The Intelligence Agency
You asked Impulse: Does Amazon getting into healthcare matter?
Amazon is creating the most thorough information agency in the world. The C.I.A., the KGB, and other intelligence agencies have swaths of information on you, your movements, your daily routines, and your past — but none of them know you like Amazon is going to.
Amazon already knows what we purchase, how often, at what discount we’re inclined to buy something in our cart, and what we search. The growing ubiquity of Alexa is another factor to consider; an increasing number of products now (or have plans to) integrate with Alexa through Alexa skills kits. These product integrations and skills will lead to an increase in user adoption and will establish Alexa as the leader in the personal assistant market.
Scott Galloway famously said, “Amazon is a search engine with a warehouse attached.” According to BloomReach, 55% of the US start their product searches on Amazon and as Alexa’s user base increases, Amazon will have the unheralded ability to harvest information on our lives, outside of purchasing. Bezos and co. will know what we question in our daily lives, what we need clarification on, and exactly how products, when positioned or introduced at the proper time, could help answer questions or needs.
Don’t believe us? The Alexa app was the number one app in the App Store during the holidays. This exemplifies Alexa being the leader and customer perception that other assistants — Google Assistant, Cortana, and certainly Siri — are inferior.
How do you deliver an ad through a voice interface without sacrificing experience?
The Exodus from Screens.
All of this is magnified by research showing, much like Facebook, screens cause depression. Conveniently, Alexa provides a screen-free user experience (with the exception of the Echo Show). The implications of these findings are monumental; as people migrate away from screens for mental health, they will still have questions. More importantly for Google’s bottom line: How do you deliver an ad through a voice interface without sacrificing experience? Apple makes money from product sales through positioning as a luxury product line and Amazon makes money from retail sales. Around 90% of Google’s revenue comes from advertising. While Google deals with an existential crisis, Amazon is fully confident in their iPhone moment.
Last Tuesday, January 31st, news broke that Amazon is partnering with Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan to form a healthcare company. The primary motivation for this, according to their PR teams, is to cut costs and improve services for their workers. The trio did not release a plan, but they still managed to erase “30 billion in market value for healthcare’s biggest companies.” according to Quartz.
What a glorious day for the general population who, for decades, have been egregiously under-served, over-charged, and left for dead by their health care provider. While this is a win for the people, Amazon is the real winner in this situation. Consider the scenarios where Alexa could step in to help:
- You’re tired of looking at a screen to self-diagnose your sickness. “Alexa, I feel sick. My symptoms are…what could I have?”
- You’re too sick to wait to be seen by a doctor, but you don’t want to pay the premiums associated with an emergency room visit, so you do what any semi tech savvy human being would do; “Alexa, schedule an appointment as soon as you can with my primary care provider.”
Enticing Marketers and Advertisers:
Could Amazon add value if an advertiser knew which products a consumer kept in their Alexa integrated smart refrigerator? To answer the counter-intuitive question; you pay a large sum of money to better position products to the consumers who want your company’s or your competitor’s products.
The healthcare move is huge for Amazon; Amazon getting into healthcare matters. This new healthcare company matters to the employees of Amazon, the current healthcare providers, and the patient/consumer.
So, to Amazon, be the change you want to see in the world. To Jeffrey, congratulations you’re one step closer to world domination.
